A medical social worker is a trained individual who typically works in a variety of settings. These could include assisted living facilities, hospitals, convalescent homes, and other types of facilities. These social workers’ responsibilities include assisting in the evaluation of patients for discharge or attending to their or their family’s needs while they are in the hospital. They may offer a wide range of services in this regard, not only during hospitalization but also before and afterward.
There may be some differences in a medical social worker’s level of education. Most have a master’s degree in social work (MSW), and many also have the additional title of licensed clinical social worker (LCSW), which requires additional training and passing of exams. A medical social worker may have a bachelor’s degree in social work instead, but this is uncommon, and hiring professionals with a much higher level of training is preferred.
The types of jobs that a medical social worker can do vary depending on the hospital where he or she works. Some of these workers, for example, work in children’s hospitals and may have a lot of contact with family members. Their responsibilities could include ensuring that families are adequately supported during hospital stays, assisting family members in filling out any paperwork for special benefits to which a sick child may be entitled, finding a family a place to stay during long hospitalizations or treatments, and educating families about any benefits that may help defer the actual or emotional cost of hospitalization.
While a child is in the hospital, the medical social worker may meet with other hospital services that may be of assistance. Child life services or nutritionist departments are examples of these. Overall, the goal would be to provide continuity of care for the child from beginning to end, to adequately support parents and children, and to ensure that everyone is ready to go and has the means to comply with ongoing treatment recommendations at the time of discharge.
In other settings, the medical social worker may have similar responsibilities. The social worker may have more direct contact with mentally aware adults, or the social worker may work with the family. Sometimes the medical social worker is faced with the challenge of working without a family and must find ways to assist the mentally disadvantaged, who are also dealing with other serious issues. During these times, these professionals employ all of their knowledge of private and public social systems to locate a person who requires the level of care required following hospitalization.
Someone interested in a career in medical social work should expect to do a lot of paperwork, interact with other social agencies, and discuss problems and issues with a variety of medical staff members on a regular basis. This is a job that can be frustrating at times, and dealing with patients, their families, doctors, and other agency personnel can all be challenging. Worse, when a lack of resources makes it nearly impossible to discharge a patient or means that a patient is discharged into less-than-ideal circumstances despite best efforts. To handle the work volume and the tensions of the job, the person for this job needs superior organizational skills, strong mediation skills, and a cool head.